If variety is the spice of life, it's now fairly well-established that Hollywood's store cupboards have been in need of a restock for the last decade or so. There are still plenty of interesting independent films being made, of course, but the bulk of the multiplex's offerings are franchise blockbusters, and there's been a distinct lack of mid-budget movies to fill in the gaps in the 2010s and into the 2020s.
Mid-budget movies are a high risk, high reward situation and, as such, many studios have opted out of the risk entirely. Still, a few are still being produced – and Glen Powell is often in them.
After making a name for himself in Top Gun: Maverick, Powell has used his star power to lead a range of mid-budget films: crime caper Hit Man, rom-com Anyone But You and, now, How to Make a Killing (which cost $15 million to produce).
A family affair
A loose remake of 1949 British comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets, Powell plays Becket Redfellow, whose mother was disowned by her uber-wealthy family for refusing to terminate her teenage, out-of-wedlock pregnancy. Although he grew up estranged from the Redfellows, Becket is still in the line of inheritance for the family fortune and, after being demoted at his retail job and running into affluent childhood crush Julia, decides to finally claim what he believes is rightfully his. All he has to do is take out the five family members standing in his way…
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The Redfellows are a Knives Out-esque cast of eccentric, insufferable wealthy people – including an obnoxious Wall Street party boy, an even more obnoxious semi-famous artist, and a celebrity pastor – and they prove to be extremely easy to kill. But maybe not that easy, because we know right from the off that Becket, eventually, gets caught: the film is structured around his account to a priest who visits him in his death row jail cell. But what we don't know is how, or when, or why, which adds some necessary intrigue to the snappy 105-minute runtime.
For me, though, Margaret Qualley is the film's standout as cartoonishly amusing femme fatale Julia, who drops in with increasingly shorter skirts and threatening demands for Becket every 20 minutes or so. The character is a fun nod to the story's mid-century roots, when femme fatales were all the rage, and, I thought, a sign that we need more character roles for younger actors.
Character study
Powell is at his best in these mid-budget movies, too – he's much more convincing and charming doing character work than he is driving action sequences in, say, Edgar Wright's The Running Man. He found fame under the guidance of Maverick co-star Tom Cruise, and Cruise got his start on a similar trajectory. These films are how you make a name for yourself: big-budget blockbusters don't come around often enough to cement your name in public consciousness, and indie fare often doesn't break through beyond the already-committed theater-going crowd. If you stick to mid-budget movies, though, you remain a consistent presence on the multiplex screen – like Powell.
As he did in Richard Linklater's Hit Man, Powell plays the "everyman thrown out of his depth" role with charm and ease. The thing about mid-budget movies is that they're usually about ordinary people in extraordinary situations – but nothing completely out of the realm of possibility, thanks to the limitations posed by production funds. Rom-coms, straightforward comedies, and a good old-fashioned caper like How to Make a Killing often prove to be better vehicles for actors, who aren't going toe-to-toe with CGI aliens or distracting action sequences. More so than in The Running Man, How to Make a Killing gives Powell space to grapple with interpersonal relationships and his own morality thanks to a simpler plot that doesn't require any worldbuilding or super high stakes.
Mid-budget movies may be high risk, high reward (and How to Make a Killing isn't exactly, uh, making a killing at the box office yet), but if Powell follows in his mentor Cruise's footsteps, he could be the answer to waning ticket sales for medium-sized movie releases. I'm keen to see what he does in his next project, a JJ Abrams sci-fi blockbuster, but I hope he still finds time for a few more capers, too.
How to Make a Killing is out now in US theaters and arrives in UK cinemas on March 11. For more on what to watch, check out the rest of our Big Screen Spotlight series.
